Wise Up
by JD4
Summary: Fuzz-free, non-Carby/Luby/*fill in any name*by stream-of-consciousness fic: Carter realizes it's not going to stop.


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DISCLAIMER: I know how much money gets bandied about in intellectual property lawsuits. I also know that I have no money. So you figure out whether you should waste your time with lil' ol' me, legal hotshots.  
**AUTHOR'S NOTES**: Stream-of-consciousness fic motivated by C. Midori's thrown gauntlet. Again, it's all her fault. (Hey, I'm starting to sound like Abby. . . .) If you crave Carby fuzz, don't read this piece. In fact, if you crave Carby fuzz, don't read anything I have ever written or will ever write. You will only wind up disappointed, and I can't stand the thought of unleashing a torrent of morose Carbies upon the world....

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Wise Up

__

It's not

what you thought

when you first began it.

You got

what you want.

Now you can hardly stand it, though.

By now you know

it's not going to stop.

It's not going to stop.

It's not going to stop

till you wise up.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

February 14. Happy Valentine's Day. He's stuck working nights yet again. Although to be fair, "stuck" isn't the proper term to be throwing about with abandon. Mere months ago, he would have found a way to switch, would've schemed to be off when she was off. But now he's given himself over to the fact that it's just not worth the exertion anymore. Even when they're home together, a simple couch cushion dividing them, they're still lifetimes apart. She'll be hunkered down in that impenetrable bomb shelter of hers while he's scratching at the door, trying to convince her to let him in.

So tonight, while he's at work, she's out with Susan and Deb. Again. Off celebrating love and romance and every other optimistic ideal that Valentine's Day could possibly represent . . . with some female co-workers. Presumably having glass of wine or two . . . or four . . . or however many it will take for her to feel like she wants to feel.

Perfect.

As he roams about the halls, shunning friendly faces, he reflects on the grisly tragedy he was treated to earlier this evening. Just before ten o'clock a stirringly gruesome suicide came in: 14-year-old boy, self-inflicted gunshot wound to the upper chest. He'd been in the ER earlier that week, fairly young for a repeat customer – car accident, the driver was 16 and drunk. No fatalities. His mother wanted a therapist to talk to him while he was temporarily laid up in bed, incapable of escaping to his room or his headphones. She lamented that he'd been entirely despondent after his girlfriend broke up with him the previous week. As part of her psych rotation, Erin had spoken to the boy. She had seemed anxious yet thrilled to have an opportunity to help.

He wasn't sure precisely how their talk had gone, he thinks as the antiseptic scent of the hall agitates his nerves – but the results were obviously less than spectacular. In the earlier madness tonight, he had spent twenty minutes just trying to stem the bleeding enough to get the kid up to the OR. Corday had exerted herself alongside him for the final ten minutes. There was nothing they could do. As he called the time of death, an exhausted and sweat-drenched Corday slammed through the doors, cursing under her breath. 

He heads up to the roof now, wanting to think about anything but the boy, wanting to be alone, terrified that he'll erupt at anyone who crosses his shadow. The bleeding image in his mind forces him to think about his own obsequious adolescence. Creeping thoughts of suicide lurked in his mind at that age. At lots of ages, honestly. But he never took that final leap into the shadowy unknown. Tonight, of all nights, it frightens him that he doesn't know why, that he can't conjure up just one sufficient and valid reason in the alcoves of his memory for not departing this world when he was younger. 

As he throws himself upon the chilled metal handle, opening the door to the roof, the winter breeze invades his lungs. The pain shorts out his overloaded senses, calming him instantaneously. He breathes in the coldness, feeling his shocked chest react to the biting air.

In his state of hyperperception, he discerns that he is not alone. Someone else is out there, sitting on the edge of the roof, head in her hands. And she's crying quietly – the sniffling is muffled but still echoes through the weave of her wool sleeves. He's too tired to comfort anyone, but his heart aches on her behalf all the same. He knows he can't offer much solace to anyone right now, not in the condition he's in, so he pivots, intending return downstairs into the chaos that cruelly prowls the halls below.

"Dr. Carter?" She calls to him. "I'm sorry I couldn't . . . . I tried, but I couldn't . . . ."

He stops, sighs. He trudges over, looks down upon her. She gazes up at his tense face, her cheeks tear-stained, her nose red. He knows he should recycle the speech he gave Gallant. The same sermon Mark had given him eons ago – when he was someone else, and when Mark was still the unflappable hero.

But when he opens his mouth to begin the flaccid recitation, nothing comes out. At a loss, he sits down beside her. He peers out over the city night, sparkling lights assaulting his eyes and then flashing out, undetected.

"It wasn't your fault," he turns to face her. "You did everything you could. Some people just . . . can't be helped, or don't want to be helped." His words of comfort sound trite reverberating in his numbed ears, but he is astonished to realize that he means every word. Erin does everything she can, every minute of the day. One of the perks of youth, he assumes. She is enthusiastic, hopeful, wholly unjaded. She is everything Abby is not. 

She attempts a feeble smile in return, the soulless moon softening her features. Her dying eyes, however, tell him she does not believe his stale consolation.

"But that was my job – to help someone who didn't want my help." She wipes dry her eyes upon her sleeve, the coarse fibers scratching her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she manages a weak laugh at her own expense. "I just can't help feeling like I let him down, like I let his mother down." She scrutinizes her shoes, repentant. "Dr. Carter, if I _had_ done enough, he'd still be alive."

As she starts to break down again, her openness and honesty submerge him in a tide of bewilderment. She's completely unguarded with him, unafraid and unashamed.

Without a word, he places an arm on her shoulder, hoping the gesture will pacify her where his words had failed. He waits for her to stiffen in reproach – he is no stranger to the cold shoulder these days. She surprises him by melting toward him, merging with him on the frozen hard concrete.

Before he can focus on her approaching face, her lips are over his, pleading for reciprocation and approval. He does not retreat. He shuts his eyes to the wrongness of it all. The image is corrupt, but the feeling is utterly flawless, so he gives himself over to the sensations, appreciating each for its solitary perfection. Her nose brushing his upper lip. Strands of her hair tickling the crease of his eye. Her tropical breath on his cheek, both warm and moist. Her pliant mouth accepting his tongue. Her chilled and delicate hands. One on his neck, fingers sifting through his hair. One gripping his taught thigh.

Everything with Abby is effort, he thinks as deepens into her kiss. This is effortless.

The understanding hits him that he and Abby will never recover, that he just can't give her any more. He loves Abby – he doesn't _want_ to, yet he does. But he can't live like this any longer. Every second that ticks by, here, on the roof, with Erin, he dances farther away from the future he had convinced himself he wanted.

He knows he doesn't love this radiant, lively woman in his arms, and she doesn't love him. But she wants him. And he needs someone. And she is there – she is someone by default.

He knows he will despise himself for this betrayal. But he can save that for later, put it away for safe-keeping, compartmentalize. Now is life, now is heat, now is satisfying a need. Now is burying the pain, if only for a bit.

Away she pushes him, his confusion surging. His eyes ask if he has overstepped a line, or if one of them has merely reacquired some sanity. She holds up her pager before his dazed expression. He eventually realizes it's beeping. He hadn't heard it. He wouldn't have heard a meteorite hit Wrigley. It occurs to him that he has no clue as to how long he's been up on the roof. As she scans her pager message, he checks his watch. 

"I've got to—"

"I'd better—" 

She laughs uncomfortably at the awkwardness staring them down, a pink tinge to her embarrassed cheeks. He smiles, but already the light and the heat are fading, shrinking away and leaving him alone with his harsh, cold thoughts.

"I've got to get downstairs." She says, waving her pager as if it were a note from her mother.

He nods and watches her bound energetically down the stairs. The door slams behind her. He turns and looks at the flickering panorama around him. The lights and the guilt pierce his mind in a combined show of force. The comprehension that he and Abby are over crashes upon him suddenly, then quietly ebbs back into the night. She'll never forgive him for this indiscretion. He vaguely wonders if she'll be glad to have an excuse now: it will unquestionably be _his_ mistake the relationship soured. She'll be able to hold this over him for the rest of her defensive, solitary life. And nothing will ever have been her fault.

He trudges back down to the familiar oppression of the ER, bewildered as to how everything that was supposed to have been so right in his life could have gone so incredibly wrong.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

END NOTES: Fic title and opening lyrics come from Aimee Mann's "Wise Up." And, finally, if you're the religious type, please pray that Wells & Orman compel the return of mature!Abby, upstanding!stalwart!Carter, virtuous!Luka, and sassy!Corday. Thankee kindly.


End file.
